#mariaspass

Marias Pass, Montana

Taken between the pass and Essex, Montana, on Highway 2.

Marias Pass

Departing the Marias Pass area, traveling eastward, I met a westbound train at East Glacier Park. I gave chase and back up the hill I went. I set up for the slow-moving train a few miles short of the summit and then ran ahead and got it at the summit itself.

This line was the former Great Northern, then Burlington Northern, and now BNSF. Glacier National Park lies to the north of the rail line and Highway 2 here.

Monuments on Marias

These images were made at Marias Pass in Montana; Glacier National Park lies to the north of where the Great Northern Railway and later Highway 2 were laid down over the pass.

In the first image we see the John F. Stevens Memorial Statue. Stevens was the civil engineer that "discovered" the pass over the great divide for the Great Northern (while the Blackfeet people used the pass for centuries prior to this). The first trains for the GN were rolling over the pass by 1893.

The second image shows the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Monument, adjacent to the statue. Built in 1931, this sixty-foot high obelisk celebrates Roosevelt's commitment to conservation.